


Queen of Thieves

by PurpleMoon3



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Leverage
Genre: Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 04:41:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16509572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleMoon3/pseuds/PurpleMoon3
Summary: Prompt fill in which Desmond meets the present day La Volpe and screams like a little girl.





	Queen of Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> The Prompt: In AC:B, La Volpe would have been well into his seventies... But looks younger than Ezio. The reason? 
> 
> La Volpe is a character passed down from person to person throughout the ages.
> 
> Cue Desmond having girly screaming fits when a purple-cowled person pops up on a rooftop in Monteriggoni a few hundred years later and introduces himself as La Volpe.

The stars don't look that different. Even with the electric streetlamps circling the ruins to provide light pollution, from the top of the Auditore Villa they don't look that different. A bit dimmer, maybe, but that could just be Desmond's own mood. The memory-scent of smoke is still heavy in his nose, and the reason he's up here instead of safe in the Sanctuary and resting in his cot is simple. 

Nightmares are becoming more frequent. As risky as it is to be out in the open with Abstergo's _cellphone surveillance_ , the bleeding effect doesn't seem to follow him to the roof. So long as he's careful not to put his weight on the less-than-repaired sections he can even manage to catch a good ten or fifteen minutes of sleep. There's just the instinctual reaching for a bottle of wine that he doesn't have to contend with. 

He should probably tell Lucy, who would recommend spending less time in the Animus, but wasn't that the point? Harness the bleeding effect. Make Ezio's skills his own. It wasn't like they had years to train him, and most of what he'd been taught as a kid had more to do with staying unnoticed by Templars than punching them in the face. Good skills for a thief.

There's a sense of pressure, and a sense of familiarity that Desmond's only used to experiencing second hand. It's _odd_ to feel it so strongly now, in the present, but escalation has been the name of the game lately. If he turns around he'll see a pale, ghostly echo of an man long dead. So he doesn't turn around. Desmond keep his eyes on the sky, on the stars, and tries to focus like Lucy tells him. _Compartmentalize._

He's alone.

“ _Assassino._ ” A smug voice hisses, a too loud whisper that is too real and too close and he can feel warm breath tickling his exposed ear. 

Desmond screams, high and terrified, but if the rooftop is far enough away from the Sanctuary to keep the screams from his nightmares from waking his allies then they won't hear him now. Desmond flails for but a moment before Ezio's reactions assert themselves and he turns a surprised neck-cracking tumble off of cracked tile and splintered, rotting beams into a corrective somersault to more solid footing. He snaps out his left arm, ring finger pulling just so, and the antique blade deploys with a near silent scrap metal on metal.

The action just makes pink lips stretch wider until a sharp line of blinding white appears between them. It's dark -of fucking course it's _night_ \- and with the shadows of the body hugging hoodie she's wearing all he can see is the smile and the faint shine of of starlight reflected in her eyes. 

“Ha!” She barks out, hands raising and palms slapping together twice in brief, pleased applause. “I was right! Elliot owes me 50 big ones!.”

“Who the fuck are you?!” Desmond half shouts, voice lowering into an angry growl mid sentence. In black jeans so faded they are almost gray, and a form fitting track jacket that Desmond's watering eyes can't decide between brown or purple, she does not look like she works for Abstergo. And if she was with the Templars, wouldn't they send more than just one skinny blonde?

“Oh. Right.” What expression was missing from the spoken words is put into her movement as the woman hops out of the crouch she'd been in. A hand flutters through the air, theatrical, and one black boot slides backwards as she bows. The smile never leaves her face. Her gaze never wavers from Desmond. _“La Volpe è La Volpe. E tu?”_

Desmond's chest contracts. His head pounds. A cloud drifts over the moon and the petite thief is obscured by an overlay of a ghostly man in a cape mish-mashing with the blue of alliance. Past is slamming into the present and it should _not be possible_. Desmond squeezes his eyes shut.

When he opens them again the woman is still there, though her arms are crossed and the smile has twisted into tight, pursed lips. Desmond swallows. He knows what Shaun would say, and Lucy, but he also knows what _Ezio_ would say. He retracts the blade and scratches the back of his head sheepishly. Some Assassin he is. “Uh, I'm Desmond. Yeah. Assassin.” 

The pleased smile comes back and she steps forward on feet so light the broken roof doesn't groan; it doesn't even creak. There isn't a whisper of her passage. “So. _Assassino._ ” She says while slathering his title in an accent so bad it actually hurts his ears a little. “Who are we killing?”

Parker, as Desmond later learns -though the name is just about as informative as La Volpe as he nor her fellow thieves know if it is a given or surname- is very blunt. She shoos Lucy away during his training periods and has them both dangling by their fingertips from the side of random buildings when Elliot isn't pushing him to his limits like Mario did for Ezio. Her boyfriend and Rebecca get along like two pyromaniacs watching a house burn down. The thief asks questions about Shaun's database that have the man throwing his hands in the air.

More than once Desmond overhears complaints about operational security and insanity.

But, well, when Desmond looks out over Monteriggioni and sees pale figures in fifteenth century garb walking side-by-side with the less elaborately dressed populace of the present day he can't find it within himself to care. His own glass house is so terribly fragile, and it was only by working with others that Ezio was able to build the Brotherhood to the heights he did. Maybe that was the problem. These days it seems the Assassins only ever look inward for help. They don't have even half the network Abstergo has, let alone the resources.

But maybe that's okay. It is going to be okay. 

“So.” Desmond slurs a bit as he comes out of his latest Animus session to see La Volpe perched on a slab of marble with a large steel bowl of popcorn in her lap. She's watching a flat screen that Alec hooked directly into Baby so they could all watch Ezio's life story like some kind of soap opera. “Any of that for me?”

**Author's Note:**

> So in my head the Thieves Guild, or more accurately the current holder of 'La Volpe' has been keeping tabs on the Sanctuary and when Desmond and friends set up shop it set off some silent alarms. And Yes. Parker inherited the title from Archie.


End file.
